A north east healthcare worker has been honoured as a Health Hero.
Cheryl Young, a Deaf Clinical Support Assistant at the mental health and deafness service at Walkergate Park, which is part of Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust is one of 33 healthcare workers to be honoured for providing excellent patient care across the UK.
Skills for Health, who host the Our Health Heroes Awards, released their shortlist which recognises and celebrates the people across the country providing excellent care. A huge 930 nominations were submitted to the Our Health Heroes awards, which included 50 from the North with a total of 33 finalists and winners have been revealed across the five categories.
Cheryl is a regional winner in the Clinical Support Worker of the Year category. Cheryl said: “It was a fantastic surprise to be told that I had won a #OurHealthHeroes award and I feel so honoured that my work has been recognised.”
Cheryl will now be part of a public vote deciding on national winners which will be revealed at an awards ceremony in November where all 33 health heroes will be honoured.
Cheryl was nominated for the impact she has made to the hospital and local community. Cheryl is deaf and uses her own experiences to help patients and support them in coming to terms with the impact of deafness and mental health issues.
John Rogers, Chief Executive at Skills for Health said: “These 33 winners are outstanding in their field and are thoroughly deserving of their places in the shortlist. The calibre of nominations we received this year was sky high. Each and every one demonstrated excellence in patient care and our judges had a really difficult task in selecting a shortlist from such high-quality submission.”
Members of the public are now being urged to vote for their winner via a portal on Skills for Health’s website which can be found at http://www.skillsforhealth.org.uk/ohh-2017 and is open until 6 November.